If I had to point out a single great virtue thanks to which the world of “pajamas” comics has managed to trap countless readers – including a server – in its networks throughout its long history, that would undoubtedly be its characters. An assortment of heroes and heroines that transcend their powers and superhuman natures to offer a reflection of the marginality, the trauma and the helplessness that the mundane alter-egos that hide behind capes, masks and masks tend to enclose.
Is this human look the one that invites us to get along instantly and makes us see ourselves projected in the Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, Hal Jordan or Barry Allen on duty; even in Thor or Superman whose conditions of God of Thunder and alien messianic savior are in the background once it is deepened in a lot more earthly problems than you might expect.
Unfortunately, the ‘Eternals’ with which Marvel Studios has decided to continue its Phase 4 are on the other side of the coin, presenting the public with a kind of ancient deities with whose icy and condescending gaze on humanity is almost impossible to connect, and what is the star the feature film with the most personality of the studio. Although this is not necessarily a positive thing, as it translates into more than two plumbs and washed out hours and a half that make what seemed impossible a reality: that a superhero movie, in addition to being boring, is tremendously pedantic.
Of gods and men
Those who know me or have read me will know that the drift of the Marvel Cinematic Universe after the end of the Infinity Saga he is not being, precisely, my saint. The cathodic productions have left me at half throttle and, in the cinematographic field, only ‘Shang-Chi’ has managed to dissipate minimally —and pure entertainment blow— the sensation of being before creations that have come out of a mass production factory; but if there is something to claim even the least inspired titles, it is that they have never gotten to bore me completely After all, the formula is well calculated to prevent it.
Knowing this, I could say – not with little regret – that ‘Eternals’ has been the first MCU film that made me feel uncomfortable in a movie theater. Much of the blame has been on a narrative with levels of chaos and density unexpected for a filmmaker of the stature of Chloé Zhao, whose leap from the independent scene to the big-budget blockbuster is marked by the tons of oral exposure with which it is intended to present, in almost 160 minutes, a mythology that is too vast and complex.
And it is that in the first cinematic adventure of the Eternals, which starts with a good dose of information in the form of not too digestible text, the motor of the story is not the action. Instead, everything revolves around tremendously engoled dialogues that underline emotions, that verbalize revelations and dramatic twists – without going any further, one of the twists The main ones are revealed in a montage sequence with a voice-over—, which channel a humanist discourse of juggernaut, and which have made me squint on many occasions at their effectist artificiality.
If we add to this a treatment of characters, interpreted with great conviction by a cast devoted to the cause, but that quickly turns from excess sensitivity to antipathy and makes it easier to empathize with an expendable comic relief than with the main group, the difficulty to enter the ‘Eternals’ proposal is too high. And, to get out, you have to go through a too long process.
Backlight
If ‘Eternals’, although it does not manage to fully detach itself from the Marvel house brand template, it deserves to be classified as the most atypical work of the MCU, it is, in addition to its indigestible narrative, for a formal bet that collides head-on with almost everything seen to date. Chloé Zhao’s hand infiltrates the usual industrial tics, projecting the pseudo-documentary look and the taste for naturalism, which she already wore in her extraordinary ‘The Rider’, onto an ambitious superhero universe rich in nuances.
Again, the director returns to emulate the spirit of Terrence Malick in an exercise of commendable style, but that ends up looking like an empty and somewhat burdensome package for a film that seems to like itself too much, which saturates after the nth plane shot against the light at magic hour with the sun’s rays filtering through the lens, and which is much less free than it appears to the naked eye — it is no coincidence that the solvent direction of photography runs to by a franchise veteran like Ben Davis.
On the other hand, and although they recur again in clichés of planning, assembling and using virtual environments, characters and cameras, the setpieces they look surprisingly good and show group dynamics that at times evoke those of Joss Whedon’s ‘The Avengers’, making ‘Eternals’ a big screen worthy experience and thunderous sound system – special mention for the Ramin Djawadi soundtrack.
Being someone who has pointed out on numerous occasions Marvel Studios’ lack of courage to step out of the mold and offer something different, it has been a true jug of cold water that the first major deviation from the path marked by Jon Favreau’s ‘Iron Man’ in 2008Despite its virtues, it ended up disappointing me to such an extent. Perhaps, after all, beyond backgrounds, forms and narrative techniques, what is truly important is something as abstract as establish an emotional connection as direct as possible between the work and the audience through the characters, and in the case of ‘Eternals’, this is as flimsy as the first steps of Phase 4.